Finland is the hottest spot in Europe for health and wellness innovations

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Finland is the hottest spot in Europe for health and wellness innovations

Over 30 Finnish health and wellness top companies present their expertise at Health 2.0 Conference in Santa Clara, USA.

Finland has internationally high standards of medical research and world-class companies in the health and wellness sectors. This dynamic, innovative environment and high level investment in research and development per capita have resulted in achievements such as Finland's extensive exports in health technology. Over the recent five-year period, Finland's health technology manufacturing and exports have seen an average growth of over 8% annually, despite the recession. In 2012 Finnish health technology exports rocketed 23%.

Finland has done well over these years in international assessments of the quality of life and happiness. The secret to this success is influenced by many factors, such as a well running society and a high level of education. For example, Finland has managed to build extremely well-functioning health services that are more cost-effective than the OECD average.

Furthermore, Finland has the advantage of having unique information resources, and the best biobanks in Europe: According to a recent European Health Telematics Association's peer review Finland is sitting on a metaphorical gold mine. The quantity, timeliness and quality of health data entered and collected from routine healthcare is impressive.

Two of the key players of Finnish innovation system Tekes – the Finnish Funding Agency for Technology and Innovation and the Finnish Innovation Fund Sitra have organized an introduction of Finnish top companies at the Health 2.0 event.

Some tidbits of the Finnish top expertise presented at a breakout demo session on October 1 at 10:30, Grand Ballroom C:

Flexible blood glucose testing system brings success

Diabetes technology company Mendor has developed a portable all-in-one blood glucose meter and a web based service for diabetes management, as well as raised 13 million euros of capital. The company intends to use the investments to fuel its rapid growth and aims to expand to the Asian and US markets.

Technology publication Red Herring listed Mendor among the top 100 most innovative European companies in 2011. In 2012, Silicon Valley based TiE50 organization, which follows startup companies worldwide, awarded Mendor a technology prize for its innovations.

The world's first health and sports performance optimizer

Omegawave is the world's first health and sports performance optimizer. Their scientifically proven and patented technology provides individuals guidance for effective and safe training, based on their actual daily physiological state. They offer smart phone and sensor based solutions connected through cloud services to teams, fitness clubs and individuals.

Omegawave´s user base includes hundreds of premier sports organizations such as Olympic Federations, elite soccer teams, NHL, NFL teams and a rapidly increasing number of individuals.

The future of healthcare is personalized and preventive

Health Puzzle YOU is a mobile service that helps people stay in good health and prevent diseases.

YOU provides its users with a variety of healthy, engaging challenges that leverage automatically gathered health data. Challenges can be participated alone or with friends. Challenges can be prescribed by your doctor. We can recommend and personalize challenges based on our user's lifestyle data, genetic data and preferences.